{"id":16257,"date":"2016-01-10T17:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T22:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16257"},"modified":"2016-01-10T17:02:30","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T22:02:30","slug":"16257","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16257","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Doomer"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/confessions-of-a-doomer\/\" target=\"_blank\">Confessions of a Doomer<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>I need to tell you of a very special talent I have. I have the very unusual and rare ability to find, to ferret out if you will,<strong>\u00a0the blatantly\u00a0obvious.\u00a0<\/strong>I mean if it is as plain as the nose on your face, I am going to figure it out. What shocks me is that this ability is so rare. What is happening to our earth and our species is so obvious it is mind blowing.<\/p>\n<p>I could give you thousands of forest disappearing, deserts expanding, rivers drying up, water tables dropping, top soil disappearing, species going extinct, ocean fish disappearing, pollution and plastic waste killing sea birds, and on and on and on. But I will start with one example that exemplifies what is happening to the entire world, the Aral Sea.<\/p>\n<p>What has been happening to the world can be exemplified by this short 3 minute video on the Aral Sea:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z0Pi61SyVSM\">The Aral Sea story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11079\" src=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-1.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 504px) 100vw, 504px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-1-300x259.jpg 300x, http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-1.jpg 504x\" alt=\"Aral Sea 1\" width=\"504\" height=\"435\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Aral Sea was once the fifth largest inland sea in the world. It supported a huge fishing industry. But that was before they dammed its tributaries to irrigate cotton fields.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11078\" src=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-2.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 586px) 100vw, 586px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-2-300x240.jpg 300x, http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-2.jpg 586x\" alt=\"Aral Sea 2\" width=\"586\" height=\"469\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11081\" src=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-7.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-7-300x277.jpg 300x, http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-7.jpg 510x\" alt=\"Aral Sea 7\" width=\"510\" height=\"471\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By 2000 it was mostly gone. The 1960 shoreline is shown on this photograph.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11082\" src=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-10.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 530px) 100vw, 530px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-10-300x268.jpg 300x, http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-10.jpg 530x\" alt=\"Aral Sea 10\" width=\"530\" height=\"474\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And today it is almost completely gone.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11083\" src=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-13.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 719px) 100vw, 719px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-13-300x163.jpg 300x, http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Aral-Sea-13.jpg 719x\" alt=\"Aral Sea 13\" width=\"719\" height=\"390\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Of course the fishing fleet is still there.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11084\" src=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Lake-Chad.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 686px) 100vw, 686px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Lake-Chad-300x170.jpg 300x, http:\/\/peakoilbarrel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Lake-Chad.jpg 686x\" alt=\"Lake Chad\" width=\"686\" height=\"389\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Of course almost the exact same story can be told about\u00a0<strong>Lake Chad<\/strong>. This once vast inland body of water once supported tens of thousands with its bountiful fish supply is now not much more than a small mud hole.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is happening to the Aral Sea and Lake Chad is happening to the entire world.<\/strong>\u00a0Rivers are drying up. Water tables all over the world are dropping, some by meters per year. Land in India and China,\u00a0as well as in other Asian nations, irrigated from underground water, that once fed billions, now feed far less and will soon feed none.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Confessions of a Doomer I need to tell you of a very special talent I have. I have the very unusual and rare ability to find, to ferret out if you will,\u00a0the blatantly\u00a0obvious.\u00a0I mean if it is as plain as the nose on your face, I am going to figure it out. What shocks me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[11590,215,11589,6245,6074],"class_list":["post-16257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-aral-sea","tag-doom","tag-doomer","tag-peak-oil-barrel","tag-ron-patterson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16257"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16260,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions\/16260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}